We celebrate the difference

In life, we are daily judged by our looks, the way we talk, the way we dress, and definitely the way we hold ourselves.

So I often wonder Am I tall enough? Am I skinny enough? Am I loud enough? Am I pretty enough? Am I confident enough? And most importantly am I ENOUGH? I wonder and I wonder until I find myself lost in a world of judgment thunder upon which I fell down the rabbit hole of discovering my body as a whole. And from there the journey of getting to accept the fact that I’m curvy began! My beloved mirror stopped having my back and changed her positive feedback. Leaving me crying and in constant demand of what changed on my behalf. My allure wasn’t fit for haute couture, my weight wasn’t great, my body was changing and my mind couldn’t stop complaining. And that’s when the journey began, I wanted to understand why my thighs expand and why I felt this uncomfortable. 

Dear readers, on this journey you will relate and on heartbreak and weight complaint you will debate but I assure you the end is worth the wait.

I’m a Tunisian girl who started to notice her body changing in a way that she didn’t like nor appreciate, in fact, it had her hating herself which messed a lot with her mental health. It was the weight gain that started to win my constant battle of self-restraint and finding its way to my thighs making skinny jeans the enemy of my silhouette. Which paved the way for my biggest struggle in life. 

Being a curvy 17-year-old girl in Tunisia was hard. It was hard because everywhere I looked, for thinness they preached, and for anything above size 2 they freaked. Therefore being out on the streets is a struggle that has been and still to this day going on repeat all due to the growing complexities that got me disguising my curves with androgynous clothes ( oversized tops and pants became my best friends) and avoiding tight ones that made me look “sexy” (I’d lose it if my top showed any type of cleavage), all in fear of that wandering look from the men on the streets or that judgy one that I get from girls who didn’t have the same body type as me. Or diving deeper into the reason behind my complexities, it is also to avoid that pervy look of the secret pedophile older men in the family. Both looks are coming from Tunisian Society Lenses. They are so deep and so extreme that they have a way to get under your skin and tighten your breath, they also dare to make you feel out of place. It all happens slowly and without a beat but at the same time if you think about it enough it’ll feel like a flash into our Tunisian reality. 

Body-shaming looks and judgy words about our curves in books, sexualizing our forms, and last-minute calls for plus-size models to join their Fashion shows. All done in the name of marketing The perfect tall thin-waisted body image which unconsciously throws us into the undying limbo of frustration and the pressure to achieve that look which not only drains our desire to look perfect but it also gets our health stuck in a big wave of neglect. Depression sweeps in to take on the day leaving me lost and choking on my dark thoughts, in need of support and longing for my body to be “fit”.So for a long time, my life was decorated with eating disorders and a lack of supporters. And dear readers, this was a whole other journey, but to give you a little sneak peek into it, let me just say that I stepped into the wonderland of Fashion and got out Alice but with a different passion. A passion not for exploring other dimensions and new worlds (although the expression is close in another meaning) but a passion for finding the perfect fit, a passion for high waisted jeans that would accentuate my morphology, and a passion for sports bras that would allow me to feel comfortable enough going outside (Because still to this day I get panic attacks from that look of judgment in disguise). 

And it is then and only then that I ask again: AM I ENOUGH? Just to answer me: "My journey is not over yet, I still don’t fully like my silhouette but my mental health is no longer a threat and my mind is nowhere near death because Today: I love myself and all my curviness!"